It’s most of the reason I got a steam deck. Emulation on the go ftw.
Out of curiosity what is the most modern system you are able to emulate on a steam deck. I’ve dabbled in MAME and PSX before, but is there a decent PS3 one?
Depends a lot on the games and compatibility. As mentioned Switch is definitely emulateable and often runs great but it heavily depends on the title.
On the Playstation side, RPCS3 is the PS3 emulator, it’s great. There are some experimental PS4 emulators, but they aren’t ready yet.
On the Xbox side, Xenia works well as an Xbox 360 emulator; it’s not linux native though, but it might work well under wine. I’m not aware of Xbox One (or later) emulators.
On the Nintendo side, I would be surprised if a Nintendo game that couldn’t be emulated exists. Even Switch games run very well on day 1 of release.
Yeah, don’t take this guy face value. These systems don’t emulate excellently at all. It definitely emulates perfectly up to GameCube and PS2 though.
Sorry, I had responded but also missed the “Steam Deck” qualifier. To be clear, the poster you’re responding to is absolutely right in general terms, but performance will be an issue for 360 and probably PS3 on the Deck.
I’ve got some PS2 games to run well, some don’t run well at all. Anything below that is great.
So what I’ve got is: NES, SNES, Genesis and Master System, PS1, PSP and then PS2 as a hit and miss.
I’ve not tried anything aside from those yet on the Steam Deck.
Edit: noticed I replied to the wrong person, but close enough, I’m not fixing it because I’m about to fall asle…
Would you be able to run AetherSX2 (android PS2 emulator) somehow on the deck to run ps2 games? That app runs a lot of then pretty well on Android phones.
For Deck, you’ll likely be using EmuDeck for your emulation setup, which will install PCSX2 for PS2 games.
You can see the other available EmuDeck emulators here: https://emudeck.github.io/frequently-asked-questions/steamos/#what-does-emudeck-install
A dude I work with just showed me PS3 emulation on the Steamdeck and it’s LUDICROUSLY good. I was shocked.
Only started getting good recently. PS3 is an especially difficult system to emulate.
You’re not wrong at all. I tried a few years ago on a high end machine with awful results. Now, thanks to incredible devs, even a lil Steamdeck can run tons of games better than an actual PS3.
I’ve been able to Emulate the Switch and Wii U on the deck. So, the steamdeck can probably do as far as the ps3/Xbox 360 era, maybe ps4 and Xbox one, but that’s a big maybe
I’ve been going through the Turbografx/PC Engine library, particularly shumps. Lots of stuff that gets overlooked from when Nintendo and Sega were dominating.
Emulating games is important but I would argue that preserving the games is moreso. If you have discs of old games lying around (I grabbed the original floppy disk version of Marathon by Bungie for less than 5 quid), please find out how to dump them into an ISO or some other archive. It’s important now more than ever as games tend towards digital distribution and old games are lost to time. The games don’t have to be good, they just need to be preserved.
I literally just set up Project64 and SNES9X yesterday lol. Nice timing. I tried Higan, but couldn’t get it to run games and got tired of trying to fix it. 9X works well enough for me to get my nostalgia fix.
SNES all the way, but there were definitely some gems on SEGA and NES that held up over time.
I’ve done plenty of SNES and NES emulation, haven’t done much on SEGA yet. Any suggestions for SEGA games that are worth trying?
Depends on what you’re looking for. Phantasy Star 4 is an excellent JRPG. Crusader of Centy/Soleil, Landstalker and Beyond Oasis are good Zelda-ish games. Gunstar Heroes and Contra Hard Corps are excellent run’n gun games.
Comix Zone is a cult classic and hard as fuck. Kid Chameleon is also worth trying, though do so with lots of patience. For beat’em up, Streets of Rage
An interesting side note: a lot of the games that are on the SNES and on the Mega Drive/Genesis are different mainly due to Nintendo contracts: “You won’t release the same game on competing platforms”. This led to several similar but different games, especially from Konami
PS: Also check out dreamcast games, it has the best version of Soul Reaver and Dead or Alive 2.
PPS: Shadowrun on the Genesis is VASTLY superior to the SNES game.
That is a good starting list, thank you. I will check those out.
I agree with the guy who said Gunstar Heros and Contra. Also for a crazy weird sidescroller with humor and good music try Earthworm Jim.
and don´t forget Neo Geo!
Mupen64 was another decent one. Project64 has always been my #1.
For accurate SNES (and several other) emulation and yet easy to use, Ares is the goto now.
I’ll check it out and get back to you.
I got a steamdeck for my birthday and I’ve only put EmuDeck on it, they are working on a PC version, it’s an all in one package.
RetroArch is super popular and available across many systems, with a bunch of open source frontends for it. I have it on a Raspberry Pi, a Mac, an OG Oculus Quest, playing everything from MAME to PSX.
I have it on my phone.
EmuDeck is basically an all in one installer for standalone emulators but also predominantly Retroarch and its cores / EmulationStation-DE.
Heck, if you look at AliExpress, there are a bunch of bootleg retro “console” that boot straight to retroarch for like 10 bucks.
Son, I’ve been doing it since 1998
Bleem!
I was thinking nesticle, but yeah
Thanks Shitman!
So good that even Steve Jobs promoted it in one of his keynotes.
Don’t forget to check out rom hacks as well. There are so many creative people who have extended or redeveloped games into their own image. Some good ones that come to mind are Chrono Trigger: Prophet’s Guile and Super Mario 64: Last Impact.
Ship of Harkinian is an absolutely brilliant way to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I have it up and running on my Steamdeck and it blows the EmuDeck/RetroArch version out of the water.
Good to see they have an AppImage now. Setting it up on Linux was a hassle when I last played it around a year and a half ago.
Can’t wait for the MM decomp and similar Ship project there. I’ve never played and and I’m holding out on that and all the great modern tweaks it brings over existing emulation.
Woah, thank you for this tip! I haven’t heard about this project.
Start it at 11 minutes. Everything before that is just his opinions on why people don’t want to emulate games.
Not saying it’s a waste of time or anything, just if you already know the arguments then it’s unnecessary.
I have a Homebrew Wii that I got set up about 10 or so years ago. Homebrew Wii can run lots of stuff. With emulation, it plays any 2D Nintendo game really well. I haven’t tried N64 emulation on it yet, but I imagine it’s pretty good.
Then it has hardware support for the entire GameCube library.
Basically Homebrew Wii can play every Nintendo game up to its own generation.
If you need a quickstart on emulation, I highly recommend Ludo. it’s a wonderful frontend that comes packaged with most emulators and just works without any fiddling.
Ludo is a retroarch spinoff that has sane defaults and a simpler interface.
I emulate a lot on my phone so I have something to do when waiting around while out of the house. Even emulating Windows and DOS to play old PC games that work great with touch controls.
What apps do you use to emulate Windows and DOS on Android? And what games? I guess any point and click game could work fine.
What apps do you use to emulate Windows and DOS on Android?
Wine and Magic DOSBox.
And what games? I guess any point and click game could work fine.
SimCity 2000 and Masters of Orion get the most play for me.
I enjoy Space Crusade under DosBox, it’s a very slow game but suits touchscreen pretty well :-)
Piracy is a moral imperative. I donate to these projects whenever I can.
Imdoingmypart.gif
Emulation is not piracy though.
Sometimes you need firmware or blobs that are protected though
True but you can prety much always dump them on your own so you don’t need to resort to piracy.
Fuck any article that tells you what you SHOULD be doing.
Even worse, it’s a video
Just picked up a new FireTV 4k Max because I heard it was the perfect device for emulation, and it is. And fairly cheap. I had been running emulators on an older firestick but the new one has much better OTG support and will recognize USB storage without mounting via Adb. RetroArch and many other standalone emulators are available on the Amazon store so you don’t even need to sideload the apps anymore.
Ive tested up to PS2 and barring a few known titles it’ll run pretty much everything. N64 included.
Amazon have stated they plan to drop Android on their sticks in the future, and switch to their own OS which I doubt will support these kinds of uses, so grab one while you can.
I once spent a 2 week holiday playing an R-Type and Metal Slug game-athon using MAME.
10/10 would emulate again.
Been using Lemuroid recently, as well as Dolphin
